ANAHEIM, Calif. — When Xander Benitez learned that Blackpink was headlining the Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival this year the decision for him and two friends to travel from their small town near Sarasota, Florida, was a simple one.
“It’s insane,” Benitez, 21, said. “The first K-pop headliner at Coachella? Hello!”
He, Jony Leyva, 21, and Edward Sebastian, 31, were easy to spot on the festival grounds on Saturday, the first of Blackpink’s two weekends there. Like many fans of the K-pop girl group, they’d taken Blackpink literally when it came picking their outfits for the day.
“It’s a phenomenon,” Sebastian said of the emergence in recent years not just of K-pop artists such as Blackpink and BTS, the latter of which could easily headline Coachella some day, but of Asian artists in general. Blackpink will be back to headline the second weekend of the Coachella this Saturday and announced a tour stop at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Aug. 26.
“Music culture is going with different cultures,” he said. “It’s a cultural reset. I feel like (Coachella is) trying to move with the culture.”
Both pointed to Leyva as the biggest Blackpink and K-pop fan of the three, and he looked it from the black cowboy hat with beaded spangles dangling from the edges to the Blackpink bar towel he carried proudly like a flag.
“It’s really important,” Leyva said of the shift that not only brought Blackpink to headline Coachella on Saturday, but saw Bad Bunny become the first Latin music headliner on Friday.
“That’s my baby daddy,” Leyva joked of Bad Bunny, who he said gave him new life after a long hot Friday. “I came in drag and was ready to leave. My wig was hurting. But then — Bad Bunny.”
Outside the Blackpink merch tent, scores of fans waited patiently in line to buy mementos of a historic day. Shirts, bucket hats, and especially Bl-ping-bongs, the black and pink hammer-like light sticks fans wave high in the air during shows.
“It didn’t have a hard decision,” said Kannikar Sanrak, a Thai native now living in New York City about buying a ticket. “Music is really connecting people. They like the rhythm and they like the music.”
Blackpink wasn’t the only Asian act on the Coachella lineup this year, of course. The Taiwanese jazz-pop band Sunset Rollercoaster played in the Sonora Tent on Saturday just minutes just before the K-pop girl group took over the main stage.
And Sunday saw well-known Asian performers including Jackson Wang and DPR Live + DPR Ian — all of which have played the Asian music festival Head in the Clouds in Pasadena in recent years — featured in prime spots on the bill.
Exiting the merch tent after their purchases were sisters Marissa Jimenez, a doctor from Dallas and Suzy Jimenez, a nurse from Austin, Texas.
“She’s a Blackpink fan, I’m a Bad Bunny fan, it worked out,” Suzy Jimenez said of their decision to come to Coachella this year.
“I still don’t understand half their music,” Marissa Jimenez said of how she fell for Blackpink after seeing them on a televised awards show. “But they make me feel good.”
Jimenez said one of the things she’s noticed and appreciated about the K-pop scene is the nostalgia that these new boy bands and girl groups have made her feel for the American boy bands of her youth.
Both said they feel the spread of K-pop and other pop music from around the world will only continue to grow.
“It’s interesting to think what the music is going to be like in five, 10 years,” Jimenez said.
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